Senior Staff Engineer, Identity Infra & Security (Cloud)

OpenAI; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work model

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Staff+ Software Engineer to build and evolve identity infrastructure supporting research, engineering, and internal platforms. The role spans cloud infrastructure, identity systems, and software engineering, requiring leadership across production systems, IaC, cloud control planes, identity providers, and operational infrastructure to deliver secure, scalable systems.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in designing and operating mission-critical systems with

Qualifications

• 10+ years building and operating large-scale infrastructure, platform, or backend systems.
• Deep experience with cloud infrastructure, identity systems, distributed systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams in ambiguous environments.
• Experience building security-critical systems involving authentication, authorization, access governance.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals with Go, Rust, Python, or similar languages.
• Ability to debug across code, cloud infrastructure, identity systems, networking, and operations.
• High bar for reliability, security, auditability, and operational rigor in mission-critical systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, development, and operation of identity infrastructure that spans cloud platforms, internal systems, and critical engineering services.
• Design and evolve systems for authentication, authorization, access governance, auditability, and policy enforcement with a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and secure-by-default design.
• Build foundational infrastructure and platform capabilities that are broadly used across engineering, research, and security teams.
• Improve the reliability, observability, performance, and operational maturity of identity infrastructure that supports mission-critical systems and workflows.
• Lead ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives across security, infrastructure, and engineering teams, driving alignment and execution across multiple stakeholders.
• Partner closely with engineers, researchers, and security teams to build scalable access patterns and infrastructure that enable rapid development while maintaining strong security boundaries and operational rigor.
• Raise the engineering bar through strong technical judgment, thoughtful system design, operational excellence, and long-term ownership of critical infrastructure.

Skills

Go

Rust

Python

Cloud infra

Identity systems

Distributed systems

Leadership

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a Staff+ Software Engineer to build and evolve identity infrastructure supporting research, engineering, and internal platforms. The role spans cloud infrastructure, identity systems, and software engineering, requiring leadership across production systems, IaC, cloud control planes, identity providers, and operational infrastructure to deliver secure, scalable systems.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in designing and operating mission-critical systems with